Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (40 page)

‘I should not expect you to,’ he said. ‘You are a perfect example of your class.’

I turned on my heel and walked away.

‘Avery!’ he called.

I kept walking.

He caught my arm. ‘It may be the only way to save Daniel Wedderburn from arrest and transportation, if not hanging.’

‘But what if he did kill his father and the others? He is intemperate and violent. He has a part in a revolutionary plot. He hated his father and Woundy. He has beaten his mother. He keeps knives in his bed. What she fears is that he killed his father. Perhaps she knows it.’

‘Then he should pay for that crime and not for one he has yet to commit.’

‘For God’s sake, Jeremiah, why do you choose to do what you do? You work for Collinson’s grandees yet you profess to hate them. Your role in the world is to bring order after crime has disrupted it. And yet you do not believe in the very order you reimpose. I do not understand you.’

Blake rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. ‘Look, the killer of Blundell and Wedderburn and Woundy, whatever you make of them, he is a monster. We must catch him. I believe Neesom knows something. Even if he does not, I must speak to him.’

‘I think this is utterly wrong, dangerously wrong,’ I said. ‘But it is a familiar refrain, is it not? You do as you wish with no recourse to me, and if I do not like it my only alternative is to leave. Just as in India. As if I had no investment myself in the resolution of our endeavour. As if nothing I think or say is of any consequence.’

‘William,’ he said.

‘I have been a fool,’ I said. ‘I have made a mistake. I have come too far from my own beliefs and my own world. I am not made for this. You have said it many times – I am of no use to you. I will return to my lodgings and pack for Devon. I have real obligations there. I find this uneasy twilight world, these half-explained exchanges, exhausting. I am a country squire and this city is more than I can take.’

‘Self-pity does not become you, William,’ Blake said.

I shook my head. Blake blew slowly out of his mouth. The air steamed. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back.

‘Do not go.’

‘Why not?’

‘I trust you.’

I sighed. We eyed one another. I sighed again. ‘Our beliefs, our understanding of the world are too different.’

‘We both know what is right and what is wrong.’

‘Do we?’

‘And there is Matty. You cannot leave without seeing her. Come with me, Avery. If nothing else, I’ll likely have need of your fists.’

I thought for a moment. ‘I want something from you in exchange. My company for some truth. About when you were a child. How you know the rookeries. The lock-picking. You must tell me.’

He gave a brief smile. ‘I was born round here. Up in the St Giles Rookery. You must have guessed as much.’

‘Not enough.’

‘My pa was a thief. The man I called my pa. Started out as a pickpocket in his younger days, went on to become a cracksman – a house-breaker. You can’t do the street stuff for ever, you lose your dexterity. I was the oldest and I was trained up for a buzzer – a street thief – from my first steps. He apprenticed me to a pickpocket for a while. I was good enough. I stole everything: laundry off lines, money off kinchins – other kids. And I had a line in diving – trying doors and windows to see what was open. If I was caught I could always talk my way out and then run fast. I must have been seven or eight then. Later my pa took me on for house-breaking. I was a scrawny thing and I could climb anything, get in through anything.
I learnt a bit about good silk, good china, good glass, good jewellery. Stole my pa’s tools and taught myself to pick locks – he gave me a walloping for it. I was shaping up for a fine career in crime. My pa was satisfied, when he wasn’t beating me.’

‘Were you only caught the one time?’

‘I had a few turns in Tothill Fields and in Newgate.’

‘You must have been very young.’

‘Eight or nine the first time.’

‘Did you know you did wrong?’

‘There were many of us. If we hadn’t thieved we’d have starved. It seemed to us that outside the rookery the world cared nothing for us. We reckoned it could do with being relieved of some of what it had. And it was what I’d been raised to do.’

‘Did you have any schooling?’

‘No.’

‘Church?’

‘Never. My pa had no time for it and it had no time for us.’

‘So you only stole from the rich?’

‘Anyone was fair game. I’m not claiming we were right.’

‘And your father was caught?’

‘Both my parents. And me. We robbed a house and were caught as we were carrying the stuff out. They got my ma for possessing stolen goods from another job. They still passed hard sentences in those days. My pa got hanging, commuted to transportation along with my ma. Someone thought to send me to India. A cheap mascot for a Company regiment.’

‘And what became of your parents?’

‘Don’t know. Don’t care. They took what they wanted from me: I paid my way from the age of four or five. I owed them nothing.’

‘Did you have brothers and sisters?’

‘Four or five. Another three or four died.’

‘What became of them?’

He shrugged. ‘I was left to shift for myself. I did.’

‘They could be here! Living still!’ I said.

‘That part of my life is over.’

‘Is it? You are still picking locks. Does Gentleman Joe know?’

‘I’ve never spoken of it.’

‘Is your name not recognized?’

‘Blake was my ma’s name. I took it when I went to India.’

‘That poet, William Blake. You did know him.’

‘I never knew him. My ma said he was a great-uncle or some such. I don’t know. She’d come down in the world. I never knew her family. I remember she talked of old Billy Blake. He wrote verses and made prints but he was a bit crazed in the head and if you knocked on his door he’d like as not open it naked. Wanted to be ready for Jesus when he came for him.’ He rubbed his ear and cleared his throat. ‘And that’s as much as I’ve said about myself in as long as I can remember.’

The cabbie carped about our rags all the way out east, but he took our money happily enough. It was dusk when we discharged ourselves from the carriage, and the streets were as quiet as any London streets I had stood in. Unnervingly quiet. And the old red-brick houses had a forlorn, abandoned air.

‘Spitalfields,’ said Blake. ‘These were some of the finest streets in London. The French silk weavers lived here. Princes among artisans. Their silk was like spun gold. The northern steam looms killed their trade, and the whole place is starving before the city’s eyes.’

To the left of us was silhouetted a large hill like some strange, brutal, grey volcano.

‘The Nichol refuse pile,’ Blake said. ‘It grows like a poisonous weed.’ He took off his patch and straightened up. ‘If Loin has followed me here, he deserves to catch me.’ He touched his ribs gingerly, then stopped when he caught me watching.

‘No more lectures,’ I said. ‘Let us get to our destination.’

He took us down a side street of silent shuttered houses. Behind us a gang of fellows, swaddled in caps and scarves, muttered and whispered. We turned left into another street, just as quiet and dark. They followed us. We took a right, at the end of which I could see a wider, better-lit road, and there they were again. Before we achieved
the end of the road, another group of shadowy figures, one of whom carried a lantern, stepped out in front of us.

‘Don’t want any trouble,’ Blake called out. ‘We’re looking for Charles Neesom. Want to talk to him.’

‘What makes you think he wants to talk to you?’ said one of the men. The lamplight showed a makeshift club studded with nails stuffed into his belt. His neighbour appeared to be carrying something heavy and round, a bludgeon wrapped in cloth.

‘I say vee finishing zem now,’ said another man with an unfamiliar foreign accent and elaborate whiskers. He opened his jacket to expose a long knife on one side and a metal bar on the other.

‘I think Neesom will want to hear what I have to say,’ said Blake, ‘Major Beniofsky.’

The first man commented that it was late to be making a social call, and the Polish major, for it was he, ignoring Blake, asked his companions if we had been followed. Our pursuers said we had not.

‘Ought to take more care,’ the first man said, turning back to Blake. ‘They’s rookeries and what not near here. Some of they’d kill you soon as look at you.’

‘I’ll mind it for the future,’ said Blake calmly. ‘Take me to Neesom.’

There was some debate as to whether they should simply knock us out and leave us in the street, or take us to Neesom. At first it seemed they all preferred to murder us, but at length the first man suggested that Neesom should decide our fate. He demanded, however, that we submit to being searched. Blake agreed, laying a restraining arm on mine. They went through our pockets, undid our belts and made us remove our shoes, jeering and laughing all the while.

The Pole and the first man muttered together. ‘Neesom’s is round the corner, on the left,’ said the first man. ‘The white thorn and the laurel. We’ll take you.’

In Neesom’s window a guttering candle put out a little light; above it was the sign with the familiar white pattern. A small bell tinkled as we entered; the Pole and his men piled in behind us.

The room reminded me a little of a library, though the titles were such as would have confounded most keen novel-readers. Shelves
of books by Thomas Paine, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, all read many times before.
An Address to Men of Science
by Richard Carlile. Piles of thin pamphlets with names like
The Principles of Nature
and
Wat Tyler
. In a corner, sitting up at a tall clerk’s desk, was Charles Neesom in his thin-rimmed spectacles.

‘Mr Neesom,’ Blake said.

‘Jem Blake,’ he said, looking coolly at us over his spectacles. ‘And Captain Avery, isn’t it? Peter, would you come through, please.’

There was the sound of a chair scraping the floor and McDouall the doctor appeared. He started very slightly. The room felt very crowded.

‘Peter said you were somewhat the worse for your injuries,’ said Neesom, standing.

‘He did a good job,’ Blake said. ‘I do not believe I thanked you, Doctor.’

The doctor nodded cautiously. ‘The swelling still has some way to go,’ he said.

‘May I ask what brings you here?’ said Neesom.

‘I have some information and some questions,’ said Blake. ‘You may know that we seek a murderer. We think he must kill again. Our goal is to stop him. Nothing more, nothing less.’

‘Then you should take yourself off to the blue bastards. They know more than they say.’

One of the men behind us laughed.

‘They are not saying it to me, whatever it may be,’ said Blake. ‘We mean your cause no harm, Neesom. We merely want to stop this man. Call off your boys.’

‘Anything else?’ said Neesom.

Blake shook his head.

‘Come, Blake,’ I said, taking his arm, ‘let us depart. They are rabble after all.’

The men behind us muttered and stirred threateningly.

‘Take care, Captain Avery,’ said Neesom, ‘our friends are touchy. Major Beniofsky, perhaps you might take your men outside?’

The foreigner looked me up and down, said something obviously coarse in his own language, pulled his knife from his belt and ushered
the others through the shop door. They stood ostentatiously outside, occasionally peering through the window. I had no doubt that if Neesom summoned them, they would instantly burst in and murder us.

‘I can see that the coppers might want to keep me from something they wish hidden,’ said Blake. ‘But I cannot see what you have to gain from watching me, stealing my papers and threatening us. Is it truly more important than letting a monster go on killing? If that is the case, you are not the men I thought you were.’

‘Do not talk of principle to me. I know the kind of work you do, the men you work for. You’re the toffs’ creature. Your patron, Lord Allington, hates us. He would be delighted to have us guilty. All those talks at which I saw you. You were a nose all the time. Your Tory friend simply confirms it.’

‘Don’t give me that. McDouall had a good look at my rooms, and you’ve seen my papers. My politics are my own. Do you think that if I were a nose, I would present myself here in such odd company as Avery? We are what we seem.’

‘The broadcloth gentry answers to the old lag?’

Blake smiled. ‘Just so.’

McDouall said dourly, ‘Why do you use a secret code if you have nothing to hide? Your notes are unreadable.’

Blake almost laughed. ‘No code, Doctor, just shorthand, a means of writing quickly. It is used to take down parliamentary speeches.’ He pulled off his gloves, stretched his hands and rubbed the stumps of his fingers. Neesom stared at them, fascinated.

‘They say you lost them fighting next to Xavier Mountstuart as he died,’ Neesom said.

‘I can vouch for it,’ I said.

‘You say you have information for us,’ said Neesom.

‘Your plot’s discovered. The coppers have your names: yours, Cardo, Williams, Beniofsky and McDouall. They know about your weapons. They know about Coldbath Fields, the training, the plans to rise, to set alight buildings and the docks, the kidnappings. They are preparing to make examples of you.’